


The Coat

by inplayruns



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-14
Updated: 2012-03-14
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:01:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inplayruns/pseuds/inplayruns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the 2012 WAFFathon. Cas' coat gets ruined during a hunt, and Dean goes to buy him a new one. Featuring Team Free Will trying to be as normal as possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Coat

Jimmy Novak's coat was made of pretty sturdy material, Dean has to figure. Okay, having an angel who can heal and fix shit wearing the thing definitely helped, but the coat’s like its own entity at this point. Dean shot and stabbed through it the first time he met Cas, and it was whole, if slightly skewed, the next time he saw the angel. It's made it through Castiel getting exploded a couple of times, even.

But as Cas pushes his palm against the werewolf's head and smites the poor bastard, it digs iron-colored claws into the tan fabric and _rips_. Those claws thud to the ground a few seconds later, and Cas has to shove the wolf carcass off him with a grunt. 

"Uh, what's up with the coat, Dexter?" Dean asks, when they all meet up by the Impala again. Hunts are kinda boring these days. None of them are complaining. 

"I'm not Dexter, I am Castiel," Cas huffs, looking down at the tattered fabric. "One of the werewolves attacked it, and..." He takes a harder glance at the coat. He expects more fabric to roll over the gashes, leaving it good as new, but it stays torn. “There must have been some poison in the claws. It’s not… letting me knit it back up.” 

“I can try and fix it for you, Cas,” Sam chimes in, as the angel rather mournfully slips the coat off his shoulders. Everyone gathered knows it’s useless, though. 

Dean snorts. “What, gonna go get your sewing kit, Samantha?” 

Sam pulls one of those faces that Dean figures is meant to express the great depths of his frustration with his stupid-ass brother, but really just makes him look like a lost puppy. As for Dean, well, he’s absolutely not having stupid puppyish feelings because Cas is pouting at the bloody, dirty, limp pile of fabric in his arms. And he’s totally not watching the way the angel’s borrowed – though, not really any more, Jimmy returned to his family after the Apocalypse and Cas given a human body all alone and griping about it sometimes – fingers trace the ugly shreds. 

* 

They spend a pretty long night with Sam trying to fix Cas’ coat, and Dean making fun of him because every time he tries to coat the edges with super glue or something, it just dissolves away. Cas keeps pouting, and doesn’t say much. 

“I’m sorry, Cas,” Sam murmurs at – like, seriously, it’s gotta be like one AM when he hands the coat, still in tatters, back to Castiel. His mouth exaggerates into a frown, again.

“You’re not even good at being the giant pigtailed girl you are,” Dean has to tease. 

Sam just wordlessly flips him off as he flops down onto his bed, but Cas gives him a look like he’s _trying_ to be angry at Dean for being such a giant assbutt even _after_ he stopped Armageddon, but he’s far too mournful to summon up that anger.

Dean’s not sure, but he thinks that’s why he finds himself buying like five Sausage McMuffins at the McDonald’s drive-thru before seven the next morning, and dumping them on the table in front of Cas when he’s just staring, still so pathetically _sad_ , at his coat the next morning.

Cas doesn’t exactly smile in return, because he’s Cas and the only time Dean ever saw him really smile was outside that bar with the hookers and he looked half-confused the whole time, too. There was that tiny flicker on the bench back in that town with Samhain, but it was more a suggestion of a smile. 

But the corners of his lips perk up a little bit, before he wraps those lips around the first of the breakfast sandwiches and starts devouring them at a frightening speed that Dean is actually pretty used to at this point.

* 

Dean goes to Bobby first, because he’s pretty sure if Bobby was the Righteous Man, he would’ve stopped that Apocalypse shit before it ever began, _and_ thrown some pretty awesome snark on dicks like Zachariah. 

“Oh, sure,” Bobby says, though. He doesn’t move from his seat, but he glares up at Dean. “I don’t have much better to do then go through all these books looking for magical werewolf poison antidotes so I can fix your angel’s coat.” 

Dean just frowns in return. He will not say _pouts_ , because he doesn’t _pout_. He knows Bobby’s gruffness is seriously like, the ultimate sign of his love, anyway. Like, if Bobby started doing anything other than one-armed hugs, that’s when Dean would get concerned. Also, maybe it’s kind of weird that he doesn’t even feel the need to protest over the _your angel_ part, but he’s not gonna worry about that.

So Dean pulls up a chair next to Bobby at his desk, and they talk about whether they should buy new guns or not, and Dean flips through a couple of old tomes that smell like absolute ass. There’s nothing in any of them, because sure, there’ll be tons of information about the Apocalypse and Lilith and the seals, but dry-cleaning is a little beyond most of Bobby’s books.

*

Bobby’s new place isn’t very far from the Roadhouse, so Dean swings by to see Ellen. Dean feels pretty lame some of the time that he saved the universe and his circle of friends didn’t really expand much, but he kinda sucks at trying to have _normal_ conversations with anyone. Most people sat around on porches and talked about, he doesn’t even know, the Cardinals’ pitching or something, and drank a beer. He sat around on a porch and talked about the best way to hunt a shrtiga, and drank probably too much beer.

So he’s still happy with his little ragtag makeshift family and all their weirdo tales, and that’s all he really needs these days. He’s got that, and the world’s not oblivion or eternal hellfire. He’s more than okay with all of that.

“You don’t know how to fix this thing, right?” Dean has to ask, after he goes out to his car to get his laptop to show Ellen some news clipping he had favorited and remembers the coat in the backseat. He tosses it over the bar. 

Ellen eyes it. “That’s Castiel’s, right?”

“Yeah.”

She shakes her head and laughs. “I love that angel,” and she really does, and they’re constantly chattering about stuff that went way over Dean’s head, and he’s kind of sad that Ash didn’t make it because watching him talk about string theory with Cas probably would’ve been the best thing ever, “but seriously, if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. Burn that thing.”

“Do you know?” Dean can’t help but ask.

Ellen just laughs again. “Burn it, Dean.”

* 

From a long time ago, Dean remembers Jo screaming about being some _freak with a knife collection_ when she’d tried and failed to go to college. At the time, he’d had thought that was weird, because she was definitely the most normal of any of them – but he can kinda understand what she’d been yelling about when he talks to her on the phone. “Dean, did my mom say you asked her to help you out with Cas’ _coat_?” she says, by way of greeting.

Dean sighs into the phone. “Yeah.” 

“Why don’t you just get him a new one?”

“I dunno what to look for.” 

“So go shopping. Take him with you.”

“Uh.” The only thing Dean goes shopping for is groceries, and he’s not great at that because he’s always buying, like, zucchini instead of cucumbers, and Sam has a fit about it. “I don’t do that.”

Jo huffs out an irritated little noise. “Dean, I know what you’re thinking, and don’t be ridiculous, please.” Dean adores Jo, honestly he does, but he’s noticed she’s becoming more and more like her mom, which means both awesome and _completely terrifying_. “Just… take Cas out to get a new coat and then go shoot something. I’ll only tell people about the second part.”

She’ll only end up telling people about how she was right, Dean thinks, though without bitterness. It makes him smile, in fact.

*

Dean Winchester has died literally more times than he remembers. He went to Hell. He started the Apocalypse. He had an archangel ride his ass, and stared the Devil in the face and told him, in so many words, _Go back to your room_.

And now, it’s time for him to conquer – the mall. Not even the mall. A shopping center.

“Anna told me shopping can be enjoyable,” Cas murmurs from the passenger seat, head angled so he can watch the neon-accented storefronts pass by. 

He’s wearing one of Dean’s t-shirts, a plaid button-up over it – Dean had to explain that he didn’t actually _have_ to button it up – and jeans, cinched hard at the waist because they’d likely fall down otherwise. Okay, so Dean had been a little curious to see what Cas looked like in anything other than his normal clothes, but he could barely tell with what Cas was wearing now. Nothing fit very well.

They end up at a fucking Macy’s. Thankfully, it’s almost totally empty, and the men’s floor is pretty small, though Cas keeps getting distracted by everything – and of course, mostly the most embarrassing shit. He headtilts looking at perfume. (“What is the point of this, Dean?” “It makes you smell good. _Girls_ smell good.” He’d had to grab him by the elbow and sort of tug at him, because it’s not like he could actually move Cas if the angel wanted to stay there.) And, Jesus, the guy had sort of _waded_ into the bikini section just to stare at the skimpy fabric. (“Better on chicks, Cas, trust me.” “Could I wear this?” “ _No_.”)

“I liked my trenchcoat,” Cas comments, staring blankly at, of course, the ties that are _next_ to the coat display. “I also like your leather jacket, though I’m not sure if that’s because I like it, or because it is on you.”

Dean’s eyebrows raise up, but – whatever. “You really know how to flatter a guy, Cas,” Dean responds, grinning despite himself. “Now, uh.” He picks out the most non-descript black jacket he can find, detachable hood, easy zip down the middle. “You wanna try this on? Changing rooms are over there.” 

Cas actually just nods and moves off easily. Dean stands awkwardly for a couple of minutes in the middle of the coat section, looming above the drab colors, before he decides it’s probably a bad idea to just leave Castiel in the changing area with no one around. 

“Uh, Cas?” he calls out, peering into the changing area. It’s just a short hallway with bland white doors, no sign of death or destruction or smiting, which is definitely a good thing. 

“I am in here, Dean,” a familiar voice sounds out, but he opens the door of his stall and it’s just – it’s funny, Cas in jeans and his new jacket, all of it rumpled along with his hair. “Is this acceptable?” 

Castiel got himself exploded by Raphael, because he turned his back on Heaven to help Dean. He followed him when even Sam thought he was being an asshole. He was the one who bartered with Michael, and is the reason Dean’s standing in this friggin’ Macy’s as opposed to being keeled over as a useless shell on some field somewhere. He stuck around after the Apocalypse was done, and even if it’s meant a ton of Gabriel checking in on his little brother, Dean can’t express how much he appreciates it. Really, he’s come to mean more to Dean than anyone outside of Sam, even if Dean could never – and honestly, didn’t want to – put a name to those feelings.

Right now, though, Castiel is just standing in a dressing room, wearing a jacket and jeans that are probably a size too big for him, arms stretched out. He might know nuclear physics better than any human, but he’s got no idea how to go shopping and he got childishly frustrated over a torn coat. Dean has explained a bunch of pop culture references to him and he _still_ doesn’t get them.

Dean still really loves him.

It’s stupid that he’s realizing this _now_ , but he’s not exactly a guy who has romantic epiphanies too often. 

“It’s great, Cas,” he gets out eventually, and he steps right up against him. The angel’s eyes go wide, but thankfully there is no other reaction.

Well. There is one thing. “Dean,” he murmurs, rather gravely. “You’re violating my personal space.”

Dean’s only response to that is tipping Cas’ chin up and moving even closer until they’re full-on kissing, and Dean is awfully happy the Macy’s is almost empty because it’s wet and loud because Cas probably doesn’t know any better and Dean – well, Dean’s always been pretty loud. 

Dean does a full-body startle when Cas’ freaking _tongue_ licks up against his lower lip. “Cas,” he breathes. “What the –”

“I’ve observed humanity for millions of years,” he huffs as means of explanation, and like, fucking _dives_ back in to put his tongue where it had been.

Dean finally manages to get out “kinky” in response, but it’s like seven minutes later when Cas’ hair is all messed up and Dean’s hands have slipped inside both of his overshirts, and he’s definitely thinking that unless they get out of Macy’s, like, now, they’re probably going to _throw_ them out. 

“Anna was right,” Cas confirms. “I will have to tell her shopping is very enjoyable indeed.” 

Dean can only huff out a laugh, regretfully pull his hands away from Castiel, and motion for him to follow him to one of the cash registers. He kind of hopes his hair isn’t too messed up and his lips aren’t super shiny because he doesn’t want any weird looks, but on the other hand, at this point, he’s too gone to really give a shit.

He never does shoot anything, at least not that night, and he feels pretty dumb when Sam tosses the trenchcoat in his lap, freshly dry-cleaned and back to normal – like, of course that was the solution – declaring “I know I’m the brains of the family, but this is just embarrassing for you.” Cas ends up more or less living in that black jacket, and as for Dean, well, he’s stupidly, scarily happy anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, major parts of the S5 canon have been changed because I'm nothing if not a giant softie.


End file.
